Berkeley Strikers Battle Police

New Left Notes, the publication of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), sympathetically covered the TWLF strike at San Francisco State and here the TWLF strike at Cal.

In this relatively fine-grained account of the strike’s first month, journalist Lee Davidson captured a key dynamic of the strike: how nonviolent pickets were met by escalating police tactics (the use of tear gas, the unprovoked beatings of students and journalists), which then widened the support for the strike on campus, even as it led strikers to engage in physical battle with the police.

Picket lines, Davidson noted, had become more anemic but surged in strength after police beat Jim Nabors, a black leader of the TWLF, and engaged in a disproportionate assault on strikers. The Daily Cal, which had hesitated to support the strike, wrote a front-page editorial “THE HORROR,” endorsing the strike’s demands and suggesting that “The reign of terror cannot longer be endured.”

The article also featured this photograph, of police beating a striker.